[Edition 23] WASHINGTON, Monday: Microsoft responded this week to the US District Court’s order for submissions on how the company could be broken up two separate entities. Under Microsoft’s proposal, one half of the company will control its Windows operating system, Explorer web browser and various other computer applications, while the other will operate a small ice-creamery in an outer suburb of Oslo, Norway.

Gates in Microsoft’s Norwegian Ice Creamery: ‘Even if I do choose to stay with the software side of the company I will always be a Norwegian Ice Cream salesman in my heart of hearts’

[Edition 23] WASHINGTON, Monday: Microsoft responded this week to the US District Court’s order for submissions on how the company could be broken up two separate entities. Under Microsoft’s proposal, one half of the company will control its Windows operating system, Explorer web browser and various other computer applications, while the other will operate a small ice-creamery in an outer suburb of Oslo, Norway.

Microsoft assured the Court that the split would see an end to most of the abuses of market power which the corporation “may have perfected” in the software and softserve industries.

“We hope Judge Jackson accepts this offer because it is really all that our operation can withstand without crumbling,” said Microsoft Chairman and renowned Muppet impersonator Bill Gates. According to documents filed in court by the company, Microsoftserve technology is an essential component of the corporation’s computing empire. Technical experts have given evidence about Microsoft’s ambitious strategy to corner the ISP (Icecream Service Provider) market.

Gates says he had staked the future of Microsoft on the dream of linking all the world’s Mr Whippy vans via mobile cellulite phones, using new wireless application protocol (WAP) technology to link the vans to central “host softservers” of dairy products. The company says it intended to mobilise an army of icecream trucks within three years to form Billy’s World Wide Whippy WAPpy whopper web, built to deliver icecream “wherever, whenever, 24-7”.

The Department of Justice has rejected the company’s submissions as “nonsense”, claiming that the ice-creamy in Garundinsky plays very little role in the monopoly power of Microsoft. But Gates insisted it was a key element of the company’s global business plan. “Just because we don’t publicise the ice creamery outside Garundinsky does not mean that it is not integral to our operations,” said Gates. “In our lean software sale years we can really be quite dependent on the sales of Microsoftserve in Garundinsky”. Gates has claimed that this is “about as much of a concession as Microsoft can make” and has made it clear that he still believes that “the future of computing and tasty icecreams can only be assured if Microsoft stays together.”